Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to build new kind of nuclear reactor in Wyoming | Hacker News Reader

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to build new kind of nuclear reactor in Wyoming

theguardian.com

62 pointsmardiyah40 comments

There have been some threads about this already:

Next generation nuclear reactor to be built in Wyoming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27376834 - June 2021 (26 comments)

Wyoming site of new nuclear power plant from Bill Gates' TerraPower - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27374840 - June 2021 (109 comments)

Hell, how about this one too:

Wyoming teen builds nuclear reactor in dad's garage - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5810940 - June 2013 (25 comments)

Every other time Warren Buffett has tried to dip his hands into energy it is solely to profit-monger on the backs of state and local governments. Shouldn't expect this project to be any different

That’s the kind of claim you need to back up with examples and citations. True or false it just sounds like slander when you throw it out there in a thread like this without any sources.

They're building a demonstration plant that won't even be coming online for another 7 years. Surely there a simpler ways to shake down local governments.

This post stinks of some weird prejudice against Warren Buffet. Any businessperson that sells goods and services to state and local governments would expect to make a profit in doing so. Do you have a specific complaint about Buffett's business practices?

Could you explain why you are prejudicing Warren Buffet?

Governments are inextricably involved in the energy sector.

Would you demonstrate the falsifiability of your claim by describing a different energy investor that has not sought to benefit on the backs of state and local governments? It would certainly help me to understand your point.

Seems at odds with someone giving now and planning to give his fortune to charity

Why specifically wouldn’t it be good intentions

Before anyone comes in to make a strawman argument, I'm gonna say myself why people like me are not fans of nuclear energy (fission).

I have absolutely no concern about nuclear waste or a chernobyl. There is a chance of those, but it will be small harm compared to other fuels.

Here are the big problems:

1. *Timeline:* Carbon reduction is like life savings. Start in the 20s and you will be way ahead. This state of the art demonstration which could not have happened in a better environment, will come online in the 30s. Mass adoption is so far away.

2. *Hesitancy:* Related to 1, some conservation and reduction effort may be halted now because people would think nuclear will fix it.

3. *Proliferation:* This technology cannot go to most places it is needed because there is a risk of atomic bomb making. It can mostly be deployed in China, India, and the US, which is huge, but won't address energy poverty.

These are the top 3 for me. Still a welcome news and a good _Plan D_ to get us from 2°C closer to 1.5°C.

> I have absolutely no concern about nuclear waste or a chernobyl.

Most people do, though. And it is one of the biggest political barriers for opening a nuclear plant.

I don't think most people do. Well, there is the usual NIMBYism, but the energy industry has figured out how to rally the public, even if it is for something disastrous like fracking.

I think the *idea* that most decision-makers and advocates are against nuclear because of those two reasons (waste & explosion), is holding us back from having a constructive conversation.

Just my 2 cents, I haven't done any academic work on this.

Japan has had really, really strong anti nuclear sentiment since Fukushima despite being very gung ho about it before.

Of the 54 reactors operating pre-earthquake, only 9 have been approved for restart and only 4 are actually operating. This is a huge operational risk for investors when billions of dollars of capital are at stake, so investors have piled into smaller, nimbler projects.

> 3. Proliferation: This technology cannot go to most places it is needed because there is a risk of atomic bomb making

Is that really true? The international community has various safeguards in place to allow the use of nuclear power without enabling proliferation of nuclear weapons. Ignoring a few governments which intentionally attempt to subvert them – and almost always get punished with sanctions for doing so – those safeguards work. Most countries which don't have nuclear reactors, it is because they don't think it is an affordable or worthwhile investment for them (given the capital cost, expected returns, environmental risks, etc). There are a few countries locked out of international nuclear energy markets due to sanctions, but they are very much a minority.

I am not sure if it is true in general. But Saudi Arabia is an example. It is considered a reliable US ally, and in the meantime there are tensions about nuclear power generation there. I'd think a lot of countries fall in that category.

The tensions are because Saudi Arabia doesn’t like the terms the US wants to impose. The US doesn’t want Saudi Arabia to make its own fuel, it wants them to promise to rely on foreign fuel processors only. Obviously that is motivated in part by proliferation concerns. But if Saudi Arabia had just accepted the terms, like UAE has, they’d probably have nuclear power by now, just like UAE does.

And the US wants to impose these rules on Saudi Arabia due to the Middle Eastern security situation (Iran, Israel, etc). It wouldn’t necessarily impose the same conditions on a country in another part of the world. And there are other suppliers with different rules, like Russia and China. If Saudi Arabia bypassed the US, that would have major negative consequences due to the US-Saudi alliance and the special security situation in the Middle East. But some other country in another part of the world could bypass the US with far less consequences

I think the Saudi situation demonstrates the challenges of nuclear power in the Middle East and Arab world. It doesn’t tell us much about the feasibility of nuclear power in other regions of the globe

Nuclear plants take a long time to build, but decarbonization also takes a long time. The world will not be fully decarbonized by the 2030s. We're going too slowly. That means that reactors coming online in the 2030s can still contribute to decarbonization. I wish that we were decarbonizing so fast that reactors built in the 2030s wouldn't matter, but we aren't.

You can see from my posting history that I am more bullish on renewables than nuclear but I'll take low carbon power of any kind until we've phased out all fossil fueled plants.

True. As long as we agree nuclear is not a Plan A, and it is not a silver bullet. Otherwise, it may cause hesitancy towards other impactful actions.

whats the silver bullet for baseload that's renewable? batteries or pumped hydro?

Hydro has historically been doing that pretty reliably. Most grid markets have access to some of it and the capacity can be conserved during day hours thanks to renewables. Add offshore wind, insulate buildings, and make utilities hand out more LEDs, those might just get us there.

Batteries are continuing to fall in cost and improve, and batteries+solar is now competitive with fossil fuels in some markets today.

We probably don't have the luxury of choosing. Solar and wind are intermittent. We probably need to both develop massive forms of energy storage and develop clean stable forms of energy (nuclear). The new nuclear in this article can output 150% for 5 hours as well.

There is something with very wealthy people and unproven technology. Numerous experimental nuclear reactor types have been developed, tested, and found lacking. A new reactor type that will fix all of nuclear's problems isn't a novel idea. So why would this reactor to be built by Gates and Buffett be any different? What do they know that the rest of the scientific community has missed? Same thing with Elon Musk and the Hyperloop; what does he know that thousands of people who have tried to improve mass transportation doesn't?

It's their money, of course, but I can't help think that it would be better spent on improving renewable technology. Wind, solar, and hydro are already beating nuclear on a cost-per-watt basis and we are very close to a situation in which a grid based on renewable energy complemented by battery storage is the most cost efficient way to generate electricity.

> Same thing with Elon Musk and the Hyperloop; what does he know that thousands of people…

Damn! What’s with Musk and electric cars?

Do you think that the rich people financing the scientific communities of yore, that had no immediate benefit for them, made a mistake? The work of many important scientists and artists in the past only was possible because some rich benefactors had more money they could spend. Companies fund the research with short-term yields, and the rich finance the crazy longshots just to see the fireworks.

It’s really unfortunate that Bill Gates has the capital for such large scale projects that have a huge impact on society. He made that money unethically, his “charity” has upsides but mostly results in Bill Gates having more control over things and yes, Epstein.

I’m pro-nuclear but anti Gates+nuclear. Or Gates+ anything really.

Bill Gates may not have a perfect business record, but it's not like he was running rubber plantations protected by an army of child soldiers.

The whole Epstein-Gates-pedophilla-cabal theory is a load of nonsense.

Epstein and Gates relationship is well documented with more being uncovered regularly.

What specific allegations of wrongdoing would you like to make against Bill Gates in relation to Epstein? Come out with it.

The mere fact that well-known philanthropist Bill Gates happened to meet with convicted-pedophile-who-tried-to-rebuy-his-credibility-through-philanthropy Jeffrey Epstein doesn't imply Gates was involved in any pedophilla.

Like I said, Gates relationship with Epstein is well documented. Go read the New York Times or The New Yorker pieces on it. What we know already disqualifies Gates from operating in the public sphere. He met with Epstein dozens of times after his conviction.

I dislike Bill Gates' era Microsoft, but his post-Microsoft life is OK.

Not really. He’s embedded himself in public policy to a dangerous degree. He was advocating to horde vaccines for instance. And like I said, his Epstein stuff was post-MS.

on the other hand they made PCs being common and enabled billions of people to use them

Windows PCs were way more expensive than alternatives like Commodore, Amiga, Atari…

And way more non-programmer friendly.

Related discussion[1]. Also, funny how this popped up 30 minutes after a report on Gates' ties with Epstein was posted[2].

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27374840

[2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27399736

You forgot to mention that _you_ posted it.

Please don't post conspiracy theories.

How is that a conspiracy theory? There's pretty clear evidence in the article that there is likely a connection as far back as the early 2000's.

Epstein has connections with a lot of people. Not all of them were engaging in nefarious behavior

Billionaires have their own private jet sharing, and Epstein provided a lot of funding to the science community.

Epstein was shady and connections to him should be scrutinized and researched , as they will be with Gates. But to think that we trying to cover up your post with this news is silly. The story by OP is genuinely newsworthy IMO.

newsworthy, but the hint that it's a dupe (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27374840 ) is correct. The suggestion that it being posted again has to do with their post is of course laughable.

I really don't think those things were related. The Wyoming reactor story has already popped up many times and there have been several dupes on the front page. People submit them and upvote them because they haven't seen the previous ones, it's as simple as that.

I unflagged your post; I don't have time to look at it because there is Tank Man drama and YC drama right now and Epstein drama is too much on top. But it's not off topic in principle. It's only probably off topic.

Understood. My comment was mostly tongue-in-cheek. Thank you for unflagging.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com